CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up returns today with another assortment of supply management technology news and updates from the past month to share with our community. If you are a sourcing, procurement, or spend management solution provider and you have news to share with us, please drop us a note at editor at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!
Coupa Software Acquires Catalog Management Solutions Provider, Simeno Holdings, AG
Earlier this week, Coupa Software (NASDAQ: COUP), a San Francisco-based spend management solutions provider, informed us that it has acquired Switzerland-based Simeno Holdings, AG, a provider of cloud-based catalog search/management applications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Coupa officials were particularly interested in Simeno’s ability to simultaneously search internal catalogs, supplier catalogs, and third-party websites. This ought to enable business users to source items from outside of their purchasing platform while pulling the spend under the company’s management and remaining internally compliant. Simeno’s cloud-based catalog search capabilities are available in 20 languages and feature fast uploading and searching; and it appears that Coupa will integrate it onto its own cloud-based B2B platform.
SourceDay Announces Mobile App for Cloud-Based PO Management Platform
Also this week, SourceDay, an Austin, Texas-based provider of automated purchase order (PO) management solutions for the cloud, informed us that it has released a native mobile application for its cloud-based procurement and PO management platform. This mobile-first app will retain all of the desktop platform’s capabilities, enabling users to access the app 24/7 and remain agile and responsive even when they are out of the office (or off the clock). Response times, bottlenecks, and PO-to-Requisition times all ought to decrease as a result. It is available for Apple and Android devices, alike, and users can downloaded the app for a small fee (suppliers whose customers use the app/platform can download the app for free).
New Features for Source One’s Spend Analysis Tool
Source One Management Services, LLC, a Philadelphia-based spend management consultancy firm, announced new features to its cloud-based spend analysis tool on the one-year anniversary of its release. In addition to an interactive, drill-down data visualization experience, SpendConsultant.com now features what it calls its Opportunity Assessment Calculator, which allows users to identify the potential value of a sourcing opportunity. Another addition gives users the ability to compare multiple data sets, like year-over-year comparisons of category, supplier, or business unit-level spend. In early 2018, Source One is looking to relaunch its eSourcing platform with more features for contract management, plus improvements to its interface and a new subscription model. Stay tuned….
Avature Launches Cloud-Based CWM Tool for Large Enterprises
New York and London-based Avature, which develops apps for customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM), announced that it has launched a new tool to help large enterprises manage their contingent workforce. “Avature Contingent Workforce” is a cloud-based tool that links with its CRM and HCM tools to integrate its full-time employee and contingent workforce in a “total talent management” ecosystem. Avature analytics, communication, candidate search, sourcing, onboarding, and offboarding tools are all included in Avature Contingent Workforce. When used in concert, these tools can help HR and procurement teams understand their current workforce levels and needs, reach out to fill critical vacancies, and manage the onboarding and offboarding processes in a compliant, cost effective manner. Avature will look to roll out 18 updates to its cloud-based solution in the New Year, particularly with regard to contract/document parsing, smart tagging, and an exportable financial transaction ledger.
Seal Software and State of Flux Partner on Contract Analysis, GDPR
Seal Software, a San Francisco-based provider of contract discovery and analytics solutions, announced that it has formally partnered with State of Flux, a London-based procurement and supply chain consultancy, on a joint endeavor to identify hidden value within their customers’ supplier contracts and address their General Data Protection and Regulations (GDPR) challenges. Seal and State of Flux have been working together for years, and this partnership seals the deal, so to speak. The two companies will combine Flux’s supply chain and supplier relationship management expertise with Seal’s machine-learning powered Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics tools to identify instances within customer contracts where the supplier has access to personal employee data. Seal’s tools ought to be able to isolate key clauses and terms within these contracts that would indicate what the supplier’s responsibilities and liabilities are for protecting employee data (professional or personal). This is meant to drastically reduce the time and labor needed to achieve GDPR compliance, which caught on in Europe but is now beginning to track in North America, too.
TraceGains Expands Supplier Management Solution Suite
A couple of weeks ago, Denver-based TraceGains, which produces supply chain compliance management programs specifically for food, beverages, and consumer packaged goods, announced that it has expanded upon its supplier management solution suite to include Supplier Management (SM) Standard. It now runs the gamut of sub processes to cover supplier discovery and qualification, and supplier information, performance, relationship, and risk management. SM Standard now houses more than 100,000 supplier contract documents from 5,000 suppliers on its TraceGains Network. Suppliers can load business data into the system once to be distributed to all of their connections. The software also has the ability to scale to the size and needs of the organization.
National Grid Sues Wipro over Botched SAP Implementation
And finally, a unique story for today’s tech round-up. Ardent Partners recently learned that National Grid, an electricity and natural gas utilities provider, has filed suite against Wipro Limited, the information technology, consulting, and business process services company based in India over an allegedly botched SAP ERP implementation. The project began in 2009 and “post go-live” concluded in 2014. Sources reveal that due to the ERP system miscalculating time, pay rates, and reimbursements, the utilities company experienced significant delays in invoice/payment processing, and significant errors in employee payroll. Two months after “going live,” more than 15,000 supplier invoices were unpaid. The botched implementation reportedly had a severe impact on National Grid’s supply management operations, affecting procurement, inventory management, and vendor payment processes. Wipro denies the allegations and sought to provide more context to the matter, saying that they joined in 2010 after there had been several previous vendors on the implementation project and had received positive reviews from National Grid during and after the deployment.
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